Medical Miseducation, Part 4

Initially appeared on doktorko.com 12/7/2005.

At our "charity" hospital, there were two call rooms for Interns and Clerks: one male and one female.  Each call room had airconditioning (thank God for small favors) and four bunk beds whose linens seemed like they were never changed.  Considering that there would be an average of around 15-20 people on duty every night (the smell of the linens would attest to this), this was nowhere near the vicinity of being enough.

At our main "pay" hospital, it was a lateral movement: each call room would have 8 beds (total of sixteen).  Unfortunately there were at least twice as many people there as the other hospital, so this meant nothing.  In addition, there was no airconditioning: there was only a small electric fan that could provide ventilation for only two beds at most.

(But of course, Dr. Despot always made it a point to tell us that we were neither supposed nor allowed to sleep when on duty anyway - meaning we had to stay awake for 24 hours straight and then round the next day for another eight to ten hours - so the call rooms were "irrelevant.")

One night when i was on duty, i went into the call room to grab a few minutes of sleep.  I thought it was unusually warm, but when i went to turn the fan on, i found only a wall-fan-shaped clean spot on the wall were it used to be.  Evidently, the management got tired of reminding the Clerks that leaving an appliance on 24/7 was a fire hazard and decided just to get rid of it.

Needless to say, this royally p!$$3d me off.  Our school administrators, whose "vocation" was hospital administration, despite a vow of poverty, lived like queens (or at least princesses).  They got chauffeured everywhere, lived in airconditioned cloisters, and wore immaculate white outfits whose detergent and bleach were bought and paid for by my parents' money.  Tuition and hospital fees soared.  Any attempts to get a new concessionaire into the cafeteria (creating competition, consequently driving down prices, and reducing the management's "cut") were blocked.  The hospital expanded with new buildings and machinery.  "The hospital" was so obviously making money -

And they couldn't afford to get a f*ck!ng electric fan with a timer for the call room!?!   Where did our f*ck!ng 40k a semester go?!?   Here we are slaving away for nothing - less than nothing! - and we can't even get a decent - HUMANE - place to rest in the dead of the night when our battered bodies and minds start stalling from sheer exhaustion?

(As an aside, there was an ugly rumor circulating that the administrators even wore Naturalizer - Naturalizer! - sandals; although this may well have been apocryphal, it got my goat nonetheless.)

After much reflection, i finally realized the awful truth.